Tag Archives: Suffering

“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” – 1 Corinthians 12:26

7 Jan

From Lara Setrakian’s 2018 New Year’s email.

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“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca

7 Jan

From Lara Setrakian’s 2018 New Year’s email.

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“It’s a great thing to have suffered. Only then can you get sick of it. You can make use of suffering to end suffering.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

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“We are filtering things constantly. – Who’s doing the filtering? It’s called attachment, desire, craving. The root of sorrow is craving.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

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“Negative feelings, every negative feeling is useful for awareness, for understanding. They give you the opportunity to feel it, to watch it from the outside. In the beginning, the depression will still be there, but you will have to cut the connection with it. Gradually you will undestandind the depression. As you understand it, it will occur less frequently, and will disappear altoghether.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

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“Pleasant experiences make life delightful, but they don’t lead to growth in themselves. What leads to growth is painful experiences. Suffering points up an area in you where you have not yet grown, where you need to grow and be transformed by change.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

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“You are never so full of yourself as when you’re in pain.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

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“Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are the swings of the pendulum.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

P. 111 “Understand another illusion, too, that happiness is not the same as excitement, it’s not the same as thrills”

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“Four steps to wisdom. The first thing you need to do is get in touch with negative feelings that you’re not even arware of. – The second step is to understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality. – The third step: Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the “I”. – The fourth step: How do you change things? How do you change yourselves?”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

On expanding the third step; never identify with negative feelings:

  • P. 80 “If you want to say depression is in there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is in there, that’s fine.  But not: I am gloomy.”
  • P. 80 “Your depression and your thrills have nothing to do with your happiness.  Those are the swings of the pendulum.”
  • P. 81 “You don’t even need to be in love.  Who told you you do? What you need is to be free.  What you need is to love.  That’s it; that’s your nature.  But what you’re really telling me is that you want to be desired.  You want to be applauded, to be attractive, to have all the little monkeys running after you. You’re wasting your life.  Wake up! You don’t need this.  You can be blissfully happy without it.”

The 4 Steps to Wisdom repeated again on P. 89: “Put this program into action, a thousand times:

  • (a) identify the negative feelings in you;
  • (b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not in external reality;
  • (c) do not see them as an essential part of “I”; these things come and go;
  • (d) understand that when you change, everything changes.

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“Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s a falsehood somwhere, just as a physical pain is given to you so that you will understand that there is a disease or illness somewhere.”

16 Nov

Anthony de Mello in “Awareness”

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